Part 26 (1/2)
He nods. ”The question being, of course, why.”
The racket of the rain on the porch roof has gotten loud, but Hattie takes up the thread of Carter's thought as if they're back in the lab. ”And the answer, maybe, that such inclusion fosters cooperation and social cohesion. Which contributes in turn to the survival of the gene pool-that is, to the genes of the individual and of his or her kin.”
An obvious answer to an obvious question; they're rusty. Still, Carter smiles. ”Go on.”
”That is, if the belief in one's inclusion isn't in itself sustaining, in some way, to the individual. Enabling one to survive extreme challenge, for example.”
”Good.”
”And/or else a by-product of other cognitive biases that were once useful-and maybe still are. The connection bias, for example.” Carter grins broadly at this-remembering their youthful conversations, maybe-but Hattie pauses midthought-surprised and pleased that she can still speak labspeak (Hattie not so batty!) but bored by it now. It doesn't speak of what she wants spoken of. ”So you won't talk to her,” she finishes.
”To Sophy?”
The rain.
”To Sophy.”
”When the church is providing her with the very stories we're discussing?” he says. ”A context? A community? A feeling that she figures?”
Where friends become family.
”You are willfully refusing to know what I know you must about some of these groups, Carter. What they are.”
”And how do you know what they are, pray tell?”
”I know by the lengths to which they will go to reel the kids in. Sending cars. Opening a school right across from the public school. They are like glial cells. Astrocytes telling a girl what kind of neuron to be. a.s.signing her to a certain layer of the cortex.”
”Neurons may differentiate once and for all, Hattie, but people do not. And what if Sophy needs a reason to wake up in the morning? A web of significance?” He stretches as if waking up to a fine new day, though the pouring rain is like a wall of water now. In the small room that is the porch he all but brushes her with his arms. His rib cage rises; his untucked s.h.i.+rt lifts high. Triangles of goose-pimpled flesh flash at his sides. ”Honestly, I think if I could get religion, I would.” He relaxes.
”This kind, Carter? Would you really get this kind, when freedom of thought is so important to you?”
”It's a marketplace of ideas, Hattie. We can't tell Sophy what to choose. It's up to her to decide what works for her.”
”Ginny thinks she knows G.o.d's will, not just for herself but for Sophy. She thinks she can see G.o.d's plan for Sophy.”
”Which you imagine dangerous.”
”Of course it's dangerous, Carter. Look at this Osama bin Laden.”
”It depends on what she sees.” A slight retrenching there, such as one rarely saw in the old days-as he seems to notice, too: He twists his body self-consciously, stretching again.
”Now you're the one who's reaching, Carter. Or have you simply avoided involvements for so long that by now it's just habit?”
”When G.o.d sends her to flight school we will worry.”
”Even if there's no Guy LaPoint, you hold back. Even if there's no one making hay with your every mistake.”
He stops. ”That's not fair.”
”You stonewall even if there's no El Honcho watching. You play smart.”
”Hattie.”
”How can you pretend to care about Sophy and stand by while this happens?”
”Hattie.”
”How can you refuse to see what's going on?-to see her?” ”Hattie, stop.”
”You know what people used to say about you in the lab? They used to say you knew everything except what you'd go to bat for.”
”Excuse me.” His look is dark. ”Did I not go to bat for this town?”
”You took a stand against Value-Mart. That's principle.” Hattie is no longer cold. ”Meredith was right about you: You know all kinds of things, and you can play all kinds of things. Instruments, games, anything. But you've never learned to care about anything, really. Anything or anyone.” She glares at him now-fixing him in the hard pour of her anger. ”You refused to see even your own brother.”
A pause. He raises his head slowly; and when his eyes meet hers now, they are a storm of their own.
”And what about you, Miss See-It-All?” he says, finally. ”What about you? Are you sure you're not just upset that you need Sophy more than Sophy needs you? Are you sure you're not just upset that that's been the story of your life?” His face is purple, his mouth low and tight, and his s.h.i.+rt suddenly loose-having failed, it seems, to contract with the rest of him. ”And when you say I've never learned to care for anything or anyone, don't you mean I never came to care for you?”
Hattie tries to focus on the talk at the Come 'n' Eat: plywood, the cell-tower site. Plywood disappearing from the mini-mall site now, too. People's voices, though, seem thin and far away, as if they're coming over the sort of vinegar-and-wire-with-stretched-parchment affair she used to make with her students in her hearing unit-working models of Alexander Bell's liquid transmitter. Mr. Watson, come here! the kids would say, when they were done. I want to see you! Mr. Watson! I want to see you!
Mr. Combustible.
Don't you mean I never came to care for you?
Candy is speaking: ”It's been disappearing in batches.” And: ”Who can watch all night?”
”That is just a fact”: Beth.
Disagreement: Should they tell the police about the van? What do they really know?
Agreement: It's finally Everett's job to secure the site. As Everett has said himself. How plain unfortunate, though, that the price of half-inch has gone through the roof lately.
”That wood was worth five thousand dollars, easy,” says Candy.
Five thousand dollars!
”Everett's extreme but you have to say, he's honest,” says Grace. Her own honest face is s.h.i.+ny, like some sort of solar s.h.i.+eld.
No one looks at Ginny.
As for whether the owner should have insisted on someone with builder's insurance, well, people around here can't afford that sort of thing, says Candy; and seeing as how her husband was in the building trades before he died, her word is considered definitive.
Are you sure you're not just upset that you need Sophy more than Sophy needs you?
Are you sure you're not just upset that that's been the story of your life?
On her way home, Hattie sees, out in front of the Chhungs', a pile of plastic and gla.s.s. She squints.